


Sound of the Sun

by undermoonlitstars



Series: Sterek Week 2018 [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Slash, Sterek Week 2018, stereklyrics4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 22:34:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16417295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undermoonlitstars/pseuds/undermoonlitstars
Summary: Mates are something of a myth among weres. Typically, they're about as rare as achieving a full shift. Given that his mother, Laura, himself and Malia could full  shift, Derek supposes he should have expected this, too. Post s5. Derek realises Stiles is his mate and returns to BH.





	Sound of the Sun

_There's no time to second guess it_

_And yes, there are things that I'm still so afraid of_

_But my courage is roaring like the sound of the sun_

I’m an Animal, **Neko Case**

 

Derek never knew how to categorise his feelings for Stiles. About Stiles.

 

Whatever it was he was feeling was always too strong, too big, too much, so he buried it down under guilt and anger until it rested with the ghosts of his family.  
  


But getting out of Beacon Hills and been a rebirth. The turnover of soil for a new planting in the spring.

 

For the first time in years he felt like he could breathe again.

 

But letting go of the ghosts meant there was room for all the things he left behind. All the people.

 

Because despite his removal, he did have pack out there. Omegas didn’t survive long.

 

Derek still had pack bonds to root him in the earth. Cora’s the strongest, despite their shaky restart, Isaac and Jackson, stretched thin with distance but still there. Scott. _We’re brothers now,_ he’d told him. Afterwards, it had seemed like a joke. But that connection to the alpha was still there. And Stiles. A bond he never wanted to look at for very long. A thing he hid, even from himself.

 

So he didn’t need to be in Beacon Hills anymore. The best way to show his gratitude for that was to stay away.

 

But this one thing.

 

When it started, it felt like nostalgia. But it grew into yearning, and desperation, faster than his abilities had declined when he was “evolving”. Fear had choked him and plagued him with restless sleep for the first time since he left Beacon Hills.

 

He felt like he was once again stuck paralysed in a pool with only one person (frail, human) keeping his head above water and no rescue in sight.

 

His wolf grew restless, too. He couldn’t ignore it anymore, he’d left Stiles behind and he was suffering for it.

 

If he was anything like Stiles, he would gone into research mode and not emerged till he had all the answers he wanted. But Derek had memories, and stories, and he knew what he wanted to be the truth, so he let himself have it.

 

Which is how he winds up driving into Beacon Hills and almost one am on a Thursday, following a red thread down a road he knows by heart.

 

There’s no cruiser in the driveway so he doesn’t have to feel guilty about waking the sheriff. For the first time in their entire acquaintance he rings the doorbell and waits to be let in.

 

He shoves his hands in his pockets and tries to ignore the fact that his heart’s racing, and is both relieved and disappointed that Stiles can’t hear it.

 

He can hear Stiles, though. It’s a familiar song he wants to listen to forever. He hadn’t been sleeping, but Stiles is complaining anyway as he stumbles through the house.

 

He rings the doorbell once more, because he’s enjoying the novelty of it, because he wants to see Stiles’s _face_. He doesn’t quite know how he went this long without, but it doesn’t matter because the door is swung open and he’s _right there_ and Derek… doesn’t have words. He doesn't know what to say, how to start explaining what he’s doing here.

 

Stiles’s mouth is hanging open, because of course it is, and Derek is pleased he managed to shock the boy speechless for once.

 

‘You… You’re here. On my doorstep,’ Stiles stammers out, and Derek smiles because he can’t help himself.

 

‘I’m here. Hi.’ He wishes he wasn’t so bad at this. He’s been aching for Stiles for weeks, months and now he’s got no clue how to talk to him, how to explain that he needs to be away but he needs Stiles too.

 

He should have known he wouldn’t need to. Should have remembered that Stiles can just look at him and know what he needs. Stiles flings his arms around Derek’s shoulders (Stiles is actually taller than him now, when did that happen?) and draws him in. Derek wastes no time in burying his face in Stiles’s neck, breathing in the scent of homeStilesmate, and he feels settled, whole in himself in a way he hasn’t ever. ‘I missed you,’ he breathes into Stiles’s pyjama clad shoulder.

 

Derek feels Stiles laugh vibrating through his chest and still holds tight when Stiles pulls back enough to look him in the eye. ‘Man, I missed you, too.’

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why the spacing is so funky on this.


End file.
